Over last couple of weeks, a very good friend of mine has sent me a couple
of e-mails about Al Gore. One characterized him as a liar, the other was
"35 Reasons Not to Vote for Gore." Both were full of outright
fabrications, poorly reported true events and political opinions poorly
disguised as facts. I thought I'd offer some thoughts about the the
significance of this, perhaps under the theme of IAAMOAC, if I have the
abbreviation correct.
For example, there's a story that just won't die, claiming that Al Gore
said that he and his wife were the models for Erich Segal's "Love
Story." Yes, this is trivial, but it seems to me that the worst sort of
gossip is that which takes the trivial and blows it up into character
assassination. Segal was a visiting professor at Harvard when Gore was a
student there. Segal confirms that Gore was, indeed, the model for the
male character in "Love Story." However, Mrs. Gore wasn't the model for
the woman in the book. But Gore never said she was -- a reporter jumped to
that conclusion and misquoted Gore. Unfortunately, the reporter's bad
journalism continues to be repeated as "evidence" that Gore is a
liar. This and the other poorly researched allegations against Gore are
making their way around the Internet on personal web sites and in
e-mails. To me, this is gossip -- gossip that presents a real threat to
our society, tearing us apart and separating us further from the truth.
To invoke my favorite analogy, I think that this resembles what happened
with religion in the Reformation. The Church believed that ordinary people
were too ignorant to understand religion. Priests were necessary to
explain everything, to be the conduit between the rest of humanity and
God. And yet, time has showed that ordinary people are no more likely or
unlikely than priests to follow or misuse religion.
--
Senior VP Strategic Development, Co-Founder
Opion Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(408) 733-7613
